Summer Travel Series Part Three: Hohenschwangau, Germany

We left from Sterzing with four large freshly baked pretzels (luckily, I could communicate in the bakery by pointing) with a mission to see the Sleeping Beauty Castle, Neuschwanstein, in Bavaria. The drive was short by our American standards, and quite a view. Check it out:

I have about a million pictures just like this because  I kept thinking it couldn’t get any better. But it would. And so I kept taking pictures.

The downside of driving though mountains is the driving-throug- the-mountains bit. The part where you look down and see a drop-off of a several hundred feet. And it’s a skinny road with no barrier and there’s a truck on the other side of the street. There were more than a few times I clutched the side of the door and just prayed I wouldn’t die. Turns out that’s a very big part of the Neuschwanstein experience!

We had a hotel just a short walk from the castle. And let me set the scene for you: We’ve been traveling for ten days now, have been through several cities, multiple hotels, and the kids are pretty much done. And we’re all like, “How FUN! This castle is sooo COOL! Let’s go take a mile hike up the mountain so we can listen to the GUIDED TOUR! We can learn SO MCUH! Doesn’t that sound like FUN?!” And the kids are like, “Can we get ice cream?” Spoiled children.

Anyway, I’m still not quite sure if they thought this was trip-worthy, we certainly spent enough money getting there so I’ll pretend that they’ll remember this for the rest of their lives. After another terrifying bus ride up a hill during which I thought I would die at least seven different occasion on a ten minute ride, I present, Neuschwanstein Castle.

Now let me set another scene for you. This picture was taken from this bridge:

Here we are again, several hundred feet up in the air on a bridge that sways and bounces when people walk on it, and there are TONS of people on it. My heart was pounding out of my chest due to my fear of heights, I’m screaming to my husband to GET THE CHILDREN FAR AWAY FROM HERE, but the photographer in me had to get the shot. And so I shoved and shook and I got the shot. And I’ll be happy if I never, ever have to set foot on that bridge again for the rest of my life.

The castle was amazing, of course. It’s pretty new, built in the 1800s, made to look like an older castle. And essentially, it was never lived in. The guy who built it was killed off before it was finished and it’s since been a German tourist attraction. But it’s totally worth it to see the ridiculous opulence this guy wanted, and for views like this:

Hey, look. Another castle.

 

 

After we saw the castle, we had a look around the town, which was built entirely around tourism, bought a beautiful hand-painted ornament that broke on the way home (still brakes my heart to think about that!), and checked out the local grocery store. I loved these sign posts:

And that was the end of our European part of the trip. The next day, we took the autobahn to Memmingen airport, the tiniest airport I’ve even seen in my life, ate our last German pretzels, and headed out to Scotland. That’s up next!